[title]
★★★
In his first ever screen to stage adaptation, director Robert Icke has taken Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning 2006 film about a disgruntled Stasi spy and turned it into a big, slick, entertaining West End thriller starring Keira Knightley.
To get it out of the way early: The Lives of Others isn’t up there with the bold reworkings of classical tragedies that have been Icke’s greatest triumphs. It ultimately feels beholden to a screenplay to which Icke’s own adaptation and translation was never likely to give a radical overhaul to.
But as an English language remake designed for a West End audience that has no need to be familiar with the source material (it helps if you have a general idea of what East Germany was) it hits the spot. Icke’s wilder directorial instincts have been subsumed by a sincere desire to tell Von Donnersmarck’s story on stage.
Nonetheless, it has a gutsy noir-ish sweep to it, defined aesthetically by thunderous use of the instrumental tracks off Bowie’s Berlin opus Low and Hildegarde Bechtler’s elegant revolving house set, whose gauzy walled inner chamber remains opaque and unknowable. He’s also persuaded producer Sonia Friedman to fork out for an enormous cast: there are 15 core members plus 24 ‘supernumeraries’ whose presence allows the stage to be flooded with bodies when called for: it’s not a flashy story, but there’s a sense of no expense spared when – early on – veteran Stasi spy Gerd (Stephen Dillane) is invited to snoop around a party thrown for playwright Georg (Luke Thompson) and there is actually a party’s-worth of people on stage.
For the most part, it boils down to a sort of strange triangle. Thompson’s Georg is the East German government’s prize playwright: talented, but loyal to the country, albeit as the story begins he’s upset at the blacklisting of his regular director Jerska (you have to assume part of Icke’s interest lies in the fact it’s a story about theatre-world politicking).
Stephen Dillane is terrific: a desiccated, hollowed out old apparatik
Then there’s his partner and leading lady Christa-Maria (Knightley), a bright, brittle actress whose talents seem disputed but whose career has been allowed to flourish by her reluctant submission to the affections of boorish minister Hempf (Andrew Woodall). And finally there’s Dillane’s Gerd: after he clocks Georg’s nascent disaffection at the party, he suggests the playwright be surveilled, and leads the operation himself. But Gerd is aghast when he discovers the whole operation is essentially happening in order to get Hempf laid: over the course of the story he drifts from spy to a sort of guardian angel to the couple.
It’s a compelling story, given real tension by Icke’s assured, pacey direction plus the fact that Gerd’s best efforts to protect the couple are clearly not equal to the increasing peril they find themselves in, as Georg slips deeper into rebellion while Hempf becomes ever more impatient for a conviction.
I found Gerd’s character worked less well on stage than screen. Perhaps it’s something exacerbated by his constant presence – Dillane almost never leaves the stage – but I never really understood why this case of all cases made him turn against a system he’d been upholding all his life. Surely this wasn’t the first instance of government corruption he’d come across? Still, stage veteran Dillane is terrific in the role: a desiccated, hollowed out old apparatik who passionlessly destroys lives but is astounded to discover the flickering embers of a conscience deep inside. Thompson is very good as Georg, a man whose initial bland niceness and aversion to risk isn’t actually a front (the Ed Sheeran of East Germany). But his slide into rebellion is really well-handled, with Thompson keeping him winningly innocent throughout.
Big name Knightley lacks the stage experience of her co-stars: this is only her third play, and first in 15 years. She is certainly a good fit with the role, and she handles Christa-Maria’s eventual plummet into despair well. But there’s not much range going on behind ‘posh and brittle’. She’s fine, but a really great stage actor could probably have elevated not only the part, but by extension probably the entire play. As it is, it’s not prime Icke, but he’s at least done a fine job in turning a 20-year-old foreign language film into gripping West End entertainment.
Adelphi Theatre, until Jan 9 2027. Buy tickets here.
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